


Who's Counting?

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Journal Four (Gravity Falls stories) [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, sibling grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Stan angst.  Grief turns milestones into millstones.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Series: Journal Four (Gravity Falls stories) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891549
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	Who's Counting?

Stan’s never been a ray of sunshine. Always mouthing off as a kid, getting into trouble, starting fights. Even as a grifter he’d found charm exhausting.

Still, though, he’s worse than usual this week. 

He’s… foul. Angry. He snaps at the customers and he sulks and he drinks, more than he should, enough so that he feels like ass the next day. His sleep is broken and scanty, half-remembered bad dreams that don’t even have the decency to fill up with monsters he can laugh at in the morning. Instead there’s just _unease_ , a dread creeping, creeping up on him, something he can’t put a finger on.

He tries working through it. Tries gluing a dead squirrel onto a fish head to make a mermaid, places an order for Mystery Shack pens with an 8-ball on the end, hypes up the Shack every morning with a hearty voice faker than the damn mermaid. He makes a little money, not enough, and the glowering stares he throws at the customers send them scurrying off.

He reads the newspaper one night, scours the classifieds for garage sales. Sometimes there’s good bargains a town or two over. 

His eyes catch the date. His stomach hollows out, implodes, sinks down, down, down past the secret basement. 

They’re turning thirty-seven tomorrow.

He’s cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. Stan grimaces, hands tightening on the thin newspaper until it tears.

He was eighteen when Dad kicked him out. When he lost Stanford for the first time. And that terrible night in the basement -- well, it might have been a haunting, instead of a reunion, for all the good it did either of them. He’d already lost his brother long ago.

He lets out a long breath. So. Thirty-seven. 

It’ll be official, then. He’ll have been without his brother for longer than they’d been together. 

The Pines twins, a distant memory.

“It was my own fault,” Stan whispers. His hand jerks, five fingers in a frantic fist, and the newspaper and his dinner plate and fork and food go flying. He brings the fist down against the table, a slam that makes his bones throb and his skin pulse, and he hangs his head, his shoulders shaking.

It doesn’t really matter if he’s noisy, he figures, his eyes burning. Not like there’s anyone around to hear him anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> Grief hits in funny ways. Sometimes it sneaks up on you before you realize what it's doing.


End file.
